Study ranks European universities on autonomy

Science : A report released yesterday from the European Universities Association (EUA) ranked universities in the UK high in all measures of autonomy. This is the EUA’s second report on university autonomy and the first one in which university systems were ranked in four different areas—organizational, financial, staffing, and academic autonomy. While it’s not certain how strongly a university’s autonomy is tied to its quality, some aspects, such as the ability to attract outside funding, are directly linked with financial autonomy. Report author Thomas Estermann expects the report to be provocative rather than prescriptive and to provide a means of comparison across countries.